Our China-fabulous Kitchen

Our kitchen (the really nice cabinet on the right was one we added)

The other day our counter broke.  It wasn't the most secure structure - a couple of wooden cutting boards balanced on a thin metal frame, so we weren't super surprised.  We discovered the back of the frame was held up by an old (now bent) cardboard fireworks shell.  Kevin found some old mop handles to wedge against the frame and now our counter is once again fully operational.

Most of the rooms in our house, other than our bathroom which I already described, are pretty much like your average American room.  Sure, the outer windows in Juliana's room are actually made from heavy plastic, window frames, and a bunch of packing tape.  And some of the tiles in our bedroom are loose.  All the outlet boxes in the house are broken and falling out of the walls - but hidden behind furniture so Juliana can't get at them.  And when I sit in one spot on the living room couch, I smell the neighbor's cigarette smoke, even though there are no vents, holes, or windows nearby (It's not just in my head; Kevin smelled it too.  It really is a mystery.)

Our nice view from the kitchen window

But otherwise, our house is pretty “normal” until you get to the kitchen.  The kitchen is separated from the living room by a large sliding glass door and window.  The door is a little small, resulting in a number of banged head and elbows, but I'm still glad it's there.  During the wintertime we keep it closed all the time, since the kitchen is at least 10* colder than the living room.

The outer wall of the kitchen is all windows - from the sixth floor we have a great view out over the campus and most of the year we see the nearby mountains.  In wintertime the coal dust haze blocks our mountain view, but we couldn't see them anyway because our kitchen windows always freeze over.  On the inside.  Instead of a beautiful view we have beautiful new ice patterns every morning!

The inside of our icy windows

Probably the most interesting part of our kitchen is the stove area.  A small box of thin metal has been attached to the outside of the house to hold the single gas burner.  It is closed off by small sliding windows, useful in the winter since the temperature inside the stove attachment is about 10* colder than the rest of the kitchen.  We have the stove burner propped up on an overturned basin and an extra piece of tile so that you can actually reach the stove.  A small hole in the wall connects the burner to the large gas tank under the aforementioned rudely constructed counter.

The stove alcove when we moved in.  We have since propped up the stove and removed the newspaper that is so wisely surrounding the gas burner!

Chinese kitchens aren't equipped in quite the same way as American kitchens.  We have a one burner stove.  The sink and counter are about six inches shorter than you'd like, unless you are Juliana reaching for a cookie left out to cool.  The sink has no hot water.  Most Chinese cooking has no need for an oven, but we have a small one we brought from Weinan.  It is conveinently just big enough for a 9x13" pan.  Unfortunately even though I set it about 50* lower than directed, it still burns the top of anything I don't remember to cover.  We have a blender, a hand mixer, a crockpot, a rice cooker, and a toaster (that was hard to find!), and my little french-press mug, so we're pretty set.  We also have a refrigerator, it just doesn't fit in the kitchen so it's in the living room instead.

I think the green fabric (covering the gas tank and open storage area) makes the kitchen look kind of pretty!  And the cutting board counter tops don't really look too bad.

One thing we were very surprised to see in our kitchen was what appeared to be a dishwasher.  Who ever heard of a dishwasher in China?  Unfortunately it was only large enough for one meal worth of dishes, and more importantly, it was covered in mold.  It was quickly replaced by a dish drying rack.  Much more useful.

I have to laugh when I see magazines or tv shows about kitchen remodels.  The “before” kitchen always looks pretty darn nice - is it really necessary to spend thousands of dollars to "fix" it?  I have to laugh too, thinking, “What if we lived in America and taped plastic on our windows or fixed our counter with an old mop handle?  We would seem so trashy!”  But here, it just makes sense.  We congratulate our friends for their ingenious repairs.

Sure, we have a bare light bulb hanging from our ceiling and some of the wall tiles are missing.  It would be nice if the kitchen were warmer or a little bigger, but it's really not a big deal. A second burner would be handy, but I'm so used to having one that I'd probably have trouble using two at once.  I still think Kitchen-Aid mixers are beautiful, but a little hand mixer serves me just fine, and you'd be amazed what you can do with a spoon!  I'm glad we don't have room for more pans or gadgets or a whole knife collection (one large cleaver is as good as 6 fancy knives) - if we had the room, no doubt we'd find a way to fill it.

I certainly like American kitchens.  They are so pretty and large and functional.  When I first came to China I struggled with not having the standard I was used to and unknowingly expected.  But now I like my kitchen.  It reminds me of what is not necessary.  It reminds me that I have everything I need and then some.

When I was younger I wanted to be an interior designer and planned to marry an architect so we could have a really beautiful house.  Until a few years ago my big dream was to own a home.  When we decided to stay in China, I realized that might never happen.  And recently I've also realized I’m just fine with that.  I've got some bigger dreams now.

Mole Hills

(Or part 2 in my little mini-series)

It's funny how parenting a toddler sometimes makes me feel like a toddler.  When Juliana is having a bad day - whining and clinging and generally falling apart, my thought process goes something like this: "I have ruined her.  It will just get worse and worse.  I will lose all control of her by the time she is 5.  I should have made her pick up her toys earlier.  I never should have given her that cracker when she was crying for it.  Now she's spoiled for life." (and I call Juliana melodramatic!)

When Juliana has a "good day" - playing well on her own, sweetly saying thank you, taking a good nap and actually eating dinner, I think, "She is such a great child.  I'm such a good parent.  Why do people parenting is so hard?  Maybe it's just that their children aren't as delightful as mine.  Remind me to tell them that if they just do exactly what I'm doing, their children will turn out great."

It's easy to get caught up in day-to-day moments of life and completely lose perspective.  I don't know about you, but I tend to make a big deal out of little things.  The other day a friend told me about taking her young barely-toddler boys to an event where they ran around enthusiastically.  Nearby another family's six children sat quietly watching the other people, looking exceptionally calm and well-behaved.  The whole way home she bemoaned what a terrible parent she must be that she hadn't taught her one year olds to sit still and quiet.

I tend to react similarly when I hear about people's children who sleep 12 hours straight at night or love to eat vegetables or play on their own for an hour at a time.  I think (and sometimes they say), "If I just parented the right way, surely my child would do that too!"  When we see a glimpse of those "perfect children," it's really hard not to freak out a little.

I remember when Juliana was 2 months old I started to become concerned that she wasn't sleeping well.  Now I laugh thinking, "My goodness, she was only 2 months old!!" but at the time those two months seemed like a really long time.  When Juliana was 8 months old and waking up an insane number of times a night, I was convinced she would never sleep well.  Seriously, I was just holding out hope for the teenage years when I hear people say their kids never want to wake up.  It sounded wonderful.  Now Juliana sleeps really well almost every night.  But when she has a bad night - usually because of a cold or similar disturbance - I instantly become afraid that this past year of sleeping through the night was just a ruse.

Similarly, I make a big deal out of my own parenting choices.  I think that breastfeeding is great and I really dislike leaving babies to cry-it-out, but I really don't think these are the end-all-be-all issues of parenting.  Some people get really, really passionate about these things.  Both sides draw lines and become bull-headed.  "If you don't breastfeed your child she will never get into college!"  "If you don't let your baby cry he will never learn to sleep!"  It’s important to think things through and make informed decisions, but these areas aren't quite as life-altering as people make them out to be.

Here is what bothers me: In America we argue about the ethics of “hiding” vegetables in our toddler’s food while millions of children go to bed hungry every night, some of whom never wake up.  We are so busy judging others discipline styles that we miss the signs of the child in our church or school who is being abused.  We are so embroiled in a “circumcision/no circumcision” debate that we don’t realize millions of girls worldwide are still undergoing female genital mutilation (“female circumcision”) a painfully unnecessary procedure that can cause severe bleeding, infertility, and childbirth complications.

The next time I am frustrated because Juliana refuses dinner once again, I want to pause and be filled with gratitude that I have food to offer her.  When I am tempted to get involved in a petty debate, I want to save my energy and passion for the things that really matter.  There are plenty of issues in the world that should make us angry, zealous, indignant, and grieved; most of them don't even enter our radar.

The fact that we have time to stress about the little things means that we aren’t facing the big things.  We are so blessed.

A bast of photos

By Kevin

I've been terrible at posting lately. For every ten times Ruth posts,  I manage to sneak something in, so I figured I'd try and make up for it with quantity.

I've started uploding a bunch of my photos to a new site called Snap My Life. I'd never heard of the site until I won a photo contest with a shot I snapped of Juliana this summer at the zoo.

I'm a big fan of Flickr and have posted tons of photos there in the last sevn years. But it does has its disadvantages: namely, I can only upload a limited number of photos a month and you can only see the 200 most recent photos (unless I fork out an annual fee). Snap My Life doesn't seem to have these restrictions. So, I've posted a bunch of photos from the last couple months four your enjoyment. I'll try and do a better job of letting you actually see some of them...

Here are some links to albums of photos from...

Our fifth wedding anniversry trip to the park.

Our trip to Sand Lake (Sha Hu) with Brian



To He Lan Shan with our classmates.

Riding through the Hutongs near Ningxia University (before they're replaced by high-rise apartments).



A scavenger hunt we had to kick off the semester.



And Juliana's Second Birthday Celebrations in Yinchuan and in Georgia (a bit early).

The Myth of the Perfect Child

"But the grass is greener over there!!"  My wonderfully imperfect child can reject a vegetable from a mile away, spot the sunrise from hours away, and has been known to collapse on the floor because she couldn't have another cracker.

I have many friends who are parents and most of them I would consider to be good parents.  Some of them are incredible parents whom I admire and want to emulate.  But most of them frequently feel like they aren’t doing a very good job.  Some days it seems like things are going well, other days they are plagued by doubt, and some days they are convinced they could win the World's Worst Parent award.  Why is it that so many good parents feel like they are failing?  I have been thinking lately about this question and want to share a few of my speculations.  Since my speculations are more numerous than my time, I think this will turn into a mini-series.  Besides, “mini-series” makes it sound like I really know what I’m talking about. :)

1. The Myth of the Perfect Child

I have a friend whose baby was sleeping through the night at 3 months old.  At 7pm she happily laid down in her bed and slept peacefully until 7am, then entertained herself quietly for another hour before alerting her mother with happy cooing.  At 6 months old this baby sat peacefully on her own, playing with toys for half an hour.  At 10 months this baby never threw food on the floor.  At 15 months she was speaking in full sentences, most of which started with the word "please."  At 18 months she self potty trained.  At 24 months she never threw tantrums and happily reached for another carrot stick, no dressing needed.  At 3 years old she was not only dressing herself, she was also doing her own laundry and picking out color-coordinated outfits.

Do you know someone like this?  Actually, me neither.  For one thing there's no way we would still be friends.  For another thing that child doesn't exist.  Our vision of the perfect child is just a compilation of all the enviable traits of a dozen children we've heard of and then dangerously expect our child to be.  But one thing we forget is that the child who was indeed a terrific sleeper had a tremendous difficulties with nursing.  That independent player is 18 months and barely talking at all.  The toddler who loves carrot sticks and brocolli won't potty train until 4.  The 3 year old did do her own laundry...flooding the washer and staining all her clothes in the process.

When I hear people brag about their child's enviable traits (or bemoan their less enviable ones), I have to think, "What is our idea of the perfect child?"  It seems to me that the perfect child is one who interferes with our life as little as possible.  He sleeps so much we hardly see him in between naps!  He plays so well on his own we don't even have to interact with him!  I often think of how much I could accomplish if Juliana didn't want to be with me all the time.  There are certainly advantages to encouraging age-appropriate independence, but is a "perfect child" really one who doesn't need her parents?

The perfect child is actually a miniature adult.  Sure, you get to dress her in cute clothes and she says funny things, but she thinks and acts like an adult.  My friends (and I) often express frustration about our children's irrational behavior.  If you were happy to eat it yesterday why won't you touch it today?  If you stick your finger in there again, of course it's going to get pinched - don't you remember the last time?  We expect our children to think the same way as fully rational adults do (forgetting how many times we also do dumb things over and over again when we should know better).

The perfect child also seems to be rather lacking in the personality and emotion. He is compliant and passive, happily agreeing to whatever we suggest.  She has no opinion (or better yet, she has our opinion) about what to eat and what to wear.  She doesn't get upset when things don't go her way (perhaps because she's so  rational).  Instead she calmly accepts life and lets it wash over her.

Sometimes I'm not sure if we've actually gotten over the idea that "children should be seen and not heard."  A good child is still considered one who looks nice but doesn't mess up our lives to much.

When our children do act like children, when they have big needs or a large personality, we start to wonder what is wrong with them -- Or perhaps more so, what is wrong with us that we can't control them.  Everyone else's baby is sleeping through the night.  Nobody else's child is screaming in the middle of the supermarket.

As parents we have a responsibility to help our children to behave appropriately, handle their emotions, and do things they don’t want to.  Some of their actions do reflect on our parenting.  But no matter how good of parents we are, we will never have a perfect child.  It is unfair to expect it from them or from ourselves.  And honestly, if we did have the perfect child, everyone would probably hate us.  Is that really what we want?  Enjoy your friends (who secretly feel relieved that your child also throws tantrums).  Enjoy your imperfect child.

The Importance of Not Being Tone-Deaf

This week the woman who taught us our first Chinese numbers and simple phrases is posting a series she calls "Language Week." Seeing as how she's lived in China for more than two decades, she has all sorts of great language-lerning stories. I thought I'd share a snippet from today's blog, titled "Of Tones and Trains" to demonstrate the importance of getting our tones right:

"We approached the window, stuck our money into the tiny opening and carefully told the lady behind the glass and the date, train number and what type of tickets we wanted. She took our money, wrote out the tickets (they were hand-written pieces of paper in 1992), and handed them to us.

Then, just to verify that we had gotten the right tickets, I stuck my nose back up to the opening and said “shi ba dian ma?” Is 8 o’clock?  The lady nodded her head and said back to me, “shi ba dian.” Is 8 o’clock.

Or so I thought.

Two days later we went to the station at 7, an hour before our 8pm train. When we showed our tickets to get into the soft sleeper waiting room, the attendant on duty looked at our tickets and said YOUR TRAIN LEFT AN HOUR AGO!!

We looked at each other in horror! ...

...we tried to figure out what had happened? How had we so completely misunderstood what time the train was to leave?

It was the tones that had tripped us up.

When we said shi ba dian ma, what was in our minds was this: is 8 o’clock?

When the ticket said shi ba dian, what she had in her mind was: 1800 hours. (6 pm)

Shi said with a falling tone means “is.” Shi said with a rising tone means “10.” Stick ba after it and together they become shiba, which means 18.

We didn’t know if we had said the tone wrong (making her hear it correctly) or if we had incorrectly heard her correct tone. It didn’t matter. The fact remained that we had missed our train because of the tones.

(go read the rest of Joann's entire post. (and while you're at it, subscribe to her blog, it's one of our favorites).

Her other "Language-week"  posts are also worth a read: What Does Ju Mean?, How Long Does it Take to Learn Chinese? and Language Week at Outside-In. This older language-learning post is also good: A Letter to Chinese Language Learners.

 

 

Strange

Yesterday toward the end of class I looked out the window. I do this a lot, but what was strange about this day was the Chinese girl standing about 6” from the window staring in at us. That wasn't too strange of itself, since we are foreigners and get plenty of stares. But ten minutes later when she was still standing staring at us, that was pretty weird. Our teacher saw her staring in the window and looked surprised but she kept on teaching. I kept giving her weird, “Why are you still staring at us?” looks. Usually after a few of these looks people will get embarrassed and move away, but this girl continued to stare with an impassive face.

When class ended the teacher whispered as I walked by, “Why was she staring? That was very strange.” I said we are foreigners so a lot of people want to look at us, but yes, that was strange. As I walked out of the building the girl was loitering by the door. The building manager (man who lives in the building, keeps an eye on things, and keeps it in good shape) was talking to her unhappily, I gather telling her to go away. The building man then came over to talk to one of the teachers nearby,  my past writing teacher Li Laoshi. He something about how this girl kept hanging around and he didn't know why.

When I walked outside to get my bike, the girl stood by the doorway staring at me. Li Laoshi came out and sternly asked her, “Are you looking for someone?” The girl didn't answer, just kept standing there. Getting more stern, Li Laoshi said, “If you aren't looking for someone then you need to leave!” The girl didn't respond, just kept standing there. I like Li Laoshi a lot, but when she gets stern, most people listen.

As I prepared to head off on my bike, the girl turned to me and finally asked, “Where are you from?” I told her America and then biked away. I'm used to staring, and I'm used to people asking where I'm from, but it was all still very strange. I couldn't decide if she was either not quite right in the head or if she was just a very simple country girl with no social graces and a large foreigner curiosity.

2 Years Old!

Dear Juliana,

Two years ago when I first held you I thought you were beautiful, but I didn't yet know what you'd become.  I suppose at two you are still in the process of becoming :), but already you have such a strong personality.  I love your enthusiasm toward life, the way you approach each day and each event of the day with eager expectation.  I love your giggles and smiles and silly faces.  Now that you are speaking, I love your 2 year old jokes you tell with a glimmer in your eye.   Even before you could speak, you always found a way to express yourself.

Daddy, looking at picture of a horse: It's a horse.  Juliana: Actually it's a cow.

Juliana, holding mama's cup: Baby's cup.  Not for mama. 

Many people who see you say you are such a happy baby, and do you ever cry?  Of course sometimes you cry, like when you really want a cracker or really don't want to sleep.  When you do, you cry with gusto.  You know exactly what you want and make sure everyone else knows too.

Perhaps in the future the years will all blend together, so I want to remember and want you to know what your life was like as you began your second year.

Daily schedule: Wake up about 6am, whether the sun is up or not.  Want breakfast right away, then play with your toys, play under mama's feet, or go outside for a walk in the morning.  You love to go outside where everyone knows 安安!  You take a 1-1.5 hour nap just after lunch, and in the afternoon 李阿姨 （Li Ayi） comes to play with you.  When the weather is good she takes you outside for a couple of hours.  We eat dinner around 6:30pm and then play together for a bit before bedtime.  Before bed you usually take a bath (every few days), put on jammies, read some stories, nurse, and then (your new habit) fall asleep with your hand on your waterbottle, hopefully to sleep until morning.

Sleeping: You have finally gotten down falling asleep on your own and sleeping through the night, except that everytime we travel you are disturbed by new places, wake up all night, and spend half the night in mama and daddy's bed kicking like crazy.

Eating: The picky stage continues.  You have expanded your diet soemwhat but are rather unpredictable.  Your favorite foods are cheese, yogurt, crackers, mac 'n cheese, hot dogs, and rice.  Your least favorite foods are all vegetables (except potatoes) and all fruits (except bananas), so mostly I try to sneak those in elsewhere.

Talking: This summer you really started using a lot of sentences, and now you are a pro at combining words and phrases to make your own meanings.  You also love to repeat back what we say, perferably adding "no" or "not" at the beginning (e.g. "NOT yummy veggies," "NO mama's toy.")  We laugh over the funny things you say.  You are starting to speak more Chinese as well, although mostly with ayi.  Just this morning I heard you say your first Chinese sentence, "安安回家了." (AnAn is back home.)

Juliana likes to hide behind the water machine.  She also things the big bag of rice (beneath her) makes a great seat.

 Playing: You love to play hide and seek, chase (with your doll stroller and riding train), and ring around the rosy.  You love to play with Little People (especially the baby), dig in the dirt, draw pictures (markers or messy paint prefered) and do almost anything as long as it's outside.  You have started to play for longer periods (sometimes 20-30 minutes) on your own, though usually with mama or daddy nearby.  Every week we have a play date with your other foreign friends in a home or at the park, and every day you see your little Chinese friends outside.  You have lots of fun.

Other favorites: You love to read and are developing a longer attention span.  You love your Pete the Cat books and can repeat parts of them.  You also love books with songs, like Jesus Loves Me, The Wheels on the Bus, and If You're Happy and You Know It.  You love to sing and approximate the words to a number of children's songs.  You still love to listen to music and dance along.  You are excited to talk to your grandparents and family on Skype.

This summer you loved playing with kitchen toys at Grandpa and Yaya's house, so for your birthday we made a play kitchen out of a large diaper box.  I hope you will enjoy it and play with it while mama is cooking.

Sometimes life with such an energetic toddler is tiring, but it is also lots of fun.  You make our lives very happy.  I am looking forward to watching you grow in this next year.

Love,

Mama

My First China Haircut

Today I got my haircut for the first time in China.  It's funny that I have lived in China for six years and never had my haircut here, but most of the time I've had long hair, so I hardly ever cut it.  Most years I cut it once in Thailand (an inexpensive salon where they gave great hairwash/head massages, spoke a bit of English, and then finished off with some really good tea) and once in America (either by my mom or in a salon if I was donating - free haircut!).

My first few years in China I was afraid of hair salons anyway.  I had no ability to communicate what I wanted in a hairstyle, and I had seen that popular Chinese hairstyles were not exactly (or at all) what I had in mind.  Short and poofy on the top with a few long strands at the base of the neck was very fashionable at the time.

Now that I have a short haircut I actually need to maintain it a little more.  After just 7-8 weeks, it was already starting to look shaggy.  I know several foreigners who go to a hair salon not far away, but I decided to try out the little hair salon at the bottom of our stairs.  For one reason, it takes about 1.5 minutes to get there.  For another reason, we know the girls in the salon.   Juliana often hears the loud dance music they like to play as we walk past and wants to go inside.  The girls are always happy to see her and her dance moves.

Walking outside our building last spring.  The hair salon is in the background, a converted apartment.

Toward the beginning of last year my tutor and I went to chat with the girls as part of a tutor activity.  I found out the two girls working there at the time were sisters.  The youngest was 16 and had just come to start working.  I don't remember everything they told us about their family, but I know it included several more siblings.  I think they were from a relatively rural area in another province, so they were probably glad for the opportunity to come work in the city.

I immediately liked the girls because they were so friendly, especially the younger one.  She laughed at my stumbling Chinese but spoke very slowly so I could understand what she was saying.  She had a "fresh from the country" innocent, excited sort of look and a ready smile.  In the past year, she has adapted more to city life - gotten a cooler hairstyle and been through several dyes, bought a new wardrobe of fashionable clothes, and of course aquired a fancy cell phone.  She doesn't look quite so young and innocent, but she is still very friendly and usually looks happy.

So today I headed downstairs for my first haircut.  We had just been learning different words related to hair and hairstyles in class and tutor time, so I was prepared.  Mostly I didn't use them, but I also didn't accidentally end up with a perm or a dye or anything.  I told her I wanted it to look about the same as my current hairstyle, just cut a little bit and held up fingers to show about 1/2".

Inside the hair salon last fall, pretending to cut my tutor's hair for a photo scavenger hunt.

First she washed my hair and massaged my scalp for a bit, always the best part, then she led me over to the chair.  The salon had similar equipment as an American salon except it was very small and a good deal more dingy.  Pictures of various popular hairstyles were strung from the ceilings and lined the walls.  An old couch and a couple of folding chairs served as a waiting area.

The haircut ended up being about 2" shorter than I had planned, definitely shorter than my summer haircut!  She used thinning shears on the whole thing, since a feathery look is popular.  My hairstylist this summer used a lot of feathering as well, though.  After a quick run through with the hairdryer she was done.  I tried to pay but realized I didn't have small enough change for my $1.50 haircut, so I ran upstairs to get a 10Y bill, again appreciating the convenience factor.  (My tutor said the average price for a  haircut ranges from 10-50 yuan, so mine was definitely a bargain. They may have given a slightly lower price since they know me).

The haircut

It's definitely short but I like it, and it may turn out to be even easier to take care of than before! And the price is really hard to beat!  I came back home and Juliana actually sat still for about 30 seconds while I gave her a haircut too!  No layers, thinning shears, or fancy stuff, but I think it's mostly straight.

Our New Neighborhood

 Kevin just took this picture from our window showing the four large apartment buildings under construction across the street.  I believe they were just starting construction on two of them last year when we moved in; I think the tallest two weren't yet started.  Construction is a daily sight in China no matter where you live; the only surprising thing about this picture is that I only spot one crane!

When Kevin picked up food from our favorite Dongbei (Northeastern) restaurant across the street, he said most of these old courtyard homes, like the one we were able to visit last spring, have been torn down.  I'm not surprised, since they were so old and increasingly surrounded by high-rises.  They weren't so nice inside, but I'm still sad to see them disappear, just as they are all over China.

Oh well, you can't live in China long without getting a new neighborhood!

From Pandas to Polar Bears: The San Diego Zoo

We have a winner: Trekaroo just announced that the photo I took of Juliana at the San Diego Zoo won first prize in it's summer photo competition. They asked if I'd be willing to write a review of the Zoo to accompany the photo, so here it is:

By Kevin

“What kinds of outings work well with not-quite-two-year-olds?” my wife and I wondered. We often bring our daughter to parks or take her to play with friends. And Juliana loves those things. But we figured it was high time for her first visit to one of Southern California's many attractions.

Juliana plays some peekaboo near the Hippo exhibit

Disneyland will undoubtedly be fun, but the price-to-enjoyability-over-other activities-ratio seemed like it wouldn't make it worthwhile for another year or two. She'd probably have just as much fun digging in the sandbox and going on the slide at the local park. Same with just about any other amusement park we conjured up. Our then 20-month-old daughter just isn't old enough to maximize the fun factor.

But we knew she loves animals. After all, she had recently entered the phase of life in which she is grabbing hold of every opportunity to name her world, particularly, every giraffe, horse or cat that pops up in her picture books.

So when our friends and their three daughters mentioned that they had a San Diego Zoo membership and were planning to make a trip, it didn't take us long to figure out where we should go.

The 100-acre zoo was fantastic. It's easy to see why the San Diego Zoo is generally considered one of the best zoos in the world. Although it is home to more than 4,000 animals and 6,500 plant species, the habitats are spacious. The animals are easy to spot and well-cared for.

Giant Panda Bai Yun gnaws on some bamboo

One of the highlights – given our connection to China – were the panda exhibits – one of the few exhibits at the zoo you have to wait in line to see because of their popularity. As we entered the line, I was excited that one year of Chinese studies meant I could actually read the Chinese characters for the panda's names, written at the entrance. Of the zoo's now four Giant Pandas (a baby was born just after we visited in July), we were able to see two: 白云 (Bai Yun or White Cloud) and 高高 (Gao Gao or Tall Tall). Unfortunately, we arrived while Gao Gao's cage was being cleaned, so we had to wait about ten minutes for him to arrive back in his cage. Then we only had a few minutes to snap a few photos before being urged on to make more room for other visitors to get a glimpse of the black-and-white bear as he lazily gnawed on sticks of bamboo.

Juliana gazes at an orangutan

Our daughter also loved other exhibits. She gazed adoringly at the orangutans. She eagerly pointed out the giant elephants. She giggled at how much bigger the giraffes are in person than in her picture books. She smiled as colorful birds whizzed past in the spacious aviaries, then picked up the tropical leaves that had fallen onto the walkway.

Orangutan rests between swings

She particularly enjoyed the polar bear and hippo exhibits, which allow you to look at the animals from multiple vantage points – both below the surface, through a giant aquarium-like window and above it. There's also a small play area which a hippo statue outside the hippo exhibit, which Juliana eagerly explored, popping her head from behind a tree in a game of peekaboo.

It didn't hurt that the polar bear exhibit was also surrounded by faux-ice caves for kids to play in. Juliana followed her older friends in and soon was emulating them as they popped their heads out of “holes” in the “ice.”

Juliana pops her head through the "ice" at the polar bear exhibit

Previously, every time she saw a bear in a picture book, she called it a dog. On the ride home, she was identifying them correctly, also adding words like “snake,” “rhino,” “panda” and “zebra” to her vocabulary.

I can't find much to fault about the San Diego Zoo. One slight negative, however, is that it is a bit tricky to navigate the hilly terrain with a stroller. Thankfully, the zoo has installed moving sidewalks that weave up and down along the hills, making it a breeze to climb them if planned out correctly. The Skyfari aerial tram is also helpful for seeing the polar bears. However, since we couldn't bring strollers on the aerial tram, we didn't explore much further than the zebra exhibit in that section of the park.

Families planning a trip to the zoo can save money by purchasing zoo memberships. Members are entitled not only to unlimited entrances to both the zoo and the San Diego Safari Park (formerly known as the Wild Animal Park) for a year, but they also receive a pair of “Super Discount Admission Coupons” to use on guests (which reduce the gate price to $15, making them worth $27 if used on adults or $17 for kids). They also get a subscription to the ZOONEWZ magazine and several other discounts. Through a deal available to California residents, we bought a dual membership, which covers two adults from the same household for $109 (a single membership is $88). Since my parents were also along for the trip, buying the membership was a no-brainer.

Regularly, adult tickets are $42 apiece. Children ages 3-11 are $32. Admission for younger kids is free, so when you factor in the discount passes, buying a dual membership is much less expensive if four or more adults are going together. Since four $42 tickets would cost $168 and the total cost of a dual membership plus two $15 “Super Discount Admissions” comes to a grand total of $139, it saves money from the getgo (for two adults and two kids it would actually cost $148 – making it slightly more expensive to buy the membership). And, on top of that, we can go back again for free. Additionally, parking is always free at the zoo.

However, a potentially even better deal is on the horizon: Kid's Free Days. In honor of the Zoo's founding, from Oct. 1 through 31, 2012, kids ages 3-11 will get free admission when accompanied by an adult. However, tickets to use the guided bus tour and Skyfari Aerial Tram (which are included with other ticket fees) cost extra.

Another way to save a few bucks is to bring your own food and water. Yes, the San Diego Zoo is one of the few amusement parks that actually allows you to bring your own food. And when you're pushing kiddos around in strollers, it's easy to pack meals for the whole family.